Tom Dunne's Music & Me: I really should have more valuable music memorabilia
The right piece of Beatle's memorabilia can fetch millions.
The writer Ray Connolly, who I have talked to often, owns a bit of memorabilia. Quite a big bit actually. I was saddened to hear this week that he’d been ill, but mention of his name made me think of my own failings in the area of music collecting.
In this material world, I am not overly endowed with valuable records. I own one numbered edition of U2’s debut, U23, copies of which have at times sold for thousands. But beyond that, nada. How can this be?
I also did not buy property in Dublin when it was cheap, or stock in Apple when Steve Jobs first appeared on the cover of Time holding one of the first Apple computers – or ‘The Future’ as the article called it. I’ve avoided Netflix stock fastidiously despite having almost invented the company in a dream and as for Bitcoin…I await its demise daily.
I can live with all that. “I am playing a longer game,” I tell people. But the lack of collectible vinyl rankles. That should be my thing: I buy gatefold sleeves, picture disks, Japanese imports. I hoard things, keep them in stupidly pristine condition and have never lent them to girls no matter how much I wanted to date them. And yet, all I have is U23.
Ray's illness brought this to mind this week. I was genuinely shocked to hear of the extent to which he and his family had suffered at the hands of Covid. A gifted writer of screenplays and music biographies it was through his Beatles books that I have shared conversations with him that I will treasure forever.
He is one of those people who appreciates when good fortune manifests itself in your life and is happy to share tales of taxi rides with John Lennon knowing you are hanging on his every word. Always the writer, he has turned his Covid experiences into a BBC Radio play. It’s a tough listen.
Yet, despite my affection for the man, I know that if I encountered him lying prostrate under a car it would not reflect well on me . I would call 911, check his airways, make him comfortable, reassure him. But then, with the haste of a child saying grace before it can eat cake, I would enquire about the “item”.
“Ray!” I’d whisper unto his ear, “ambulance on the way and everything, but just one thing, the item, that thing we’ve discussed, it’s safe isn’t it?” Of course It would be safe, as he keeps it in the Bank. But before you rightly condemn me may I say I think his mind would follow a similar path. Facing a firing squad I’m quite sure Ray’s thoughts would go to, “Wife, family, friends, item.”
The item is of Beatles provenance and Beatles items are the most valued in the world. For instance while an autographed photo of the Apollo 11 astronauts, three men who actually walked on the moon, will set you back $10,000, an autographed photo of four men who just walked across a road in West London will set you back $29,500!
It doesn’t stop there: A guitar played by John sold for $2.4 million in 2015 and just one skin from the kit used by Ringo on the Ed Sullivan Show sold for $2.1millon in the same year.
But what of ‘collectible vinyl’ I hear you say? A copy of The White Album, well copy number 0000001 to be precise, sold for $790,000 in 2015. It wasn’t even in particularly great condition.
But that is not what Ray has. He and John were close and he’d been due to interview Lennon on the day he was shot. Coincidentally, the album John autographed for his killer that day sold in 2011 for $532,000.
But in earlier, happier times, in a cab in NYC sometime in 1971, John had pushed something into Ray’s hands. “Here,” he said, “you keep this.” It was the acetate, the test pressing, of John’s new and as yet unreleased album. The album was called Imagine.
Estimates? I’d say start the bidding at, “Priceless”.
